A Woman From Chadwicks

How One Doctor Gave Life To Many
And How One Of Those People Made That Life Worth Living

A Woman From Chadwicks details the human side of the early heart surgeries that took place in the 1950s. How one doctor gave life to many and how one of those people made that life worth living. How that one person - as mother-to-be and then as a mother - was used as an example to nurses that the future had arrived in Philadelphia.

The book details how this woman underwent two heart surgeries in 1952 and 1958. The first was a closed-heart surgery where the doctor inserted his finger into the hole in her heart and stitched a thread around his finger. He did this without the ability to visually see his stitching. (Yes, you read correctly. The surgeon did not have the ability to see the stitches as he strived to repair the hole because the chest cavity was not fully opened during closed-heart surgery.) But the surgery in 1952 was in reality a medical procedure to keep this woman alive long enough for a new procedure to be developed more fully – open-heart surgery.

Complications followed that second heart surgery in 1958. The woman had to undergo a tracheotomy – her throat was cut open while wide awake with no anesthesia - because she needed to breath and the attending doctor acted quickly to again save her life. She was then immersed in a tank of ice after the tracheotomy. The goal was to lower her body temperature and allow her heart to slow down. She remained immersed in that tank of ice for three days.

Her survival was a miracle in itself.

But the fact that she got pregnant and was able to carry a baby to a live birth was an even stronger statement. While she was not the first woman to do so, she was one of the women used as role models so that others could see the potential for life.

The fact that the baby lived (and two other babies subsequently were born) was further proof that women who had undergone heart surgery could withstand the stress of pregnancy and the birth of babies.

And live.

This is the story of A Woman From Chadwicks.

Credits:

The cover photo is a scene of a small waterfall located on a modest stream off of Elm Street, near Mohawk Street,
in Chadwicks, New York. Produced in the Fall of 2012, the photograph was provided courtesy of
Todd Walker, a photographer based in Sauquoit, New York.